Yang Yuanqing was a board chairman of Lenovo from 2004-2008. Before the acquisition of IBM PC division by Lenovo in 2004, he was the President and CEO of the company. One of his major achievements has been making Lenovo the best-selling PC brand in China since 1997. In 2001, Business Week named him as one of the rising stars in Asia.

Early life and career

Born on November 12, 1964 to parents who are both educated surgeons, Yang Yuanqing grew up poor in Hefei, Anhui. He received his undergraduate degree in computer science from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and graduated with a masters from University of Science and Technology of China in 1988. In 1989, he joined Legend Group, as Lenovo was then known. Since then, he has moved up the ranks quickly to become its CEO before it acquired the PC business of IBM. On 8 December 2004, he became the chairman of the board of the Lenovo Group. In February 2009, he assumed the position of CEO at Lenovo.